UK.gov's 'public data' wagon spews out civil service lists

As disquiet over pay and pensions among civil servants throughout the land looks set to lead to strikes aplenty later this month, the Cabinet Office has been busy compiling lists about its public sector workers to underline its "transparency" pledge.

Organisational charts on the UK Civil Service were published on the data.gov.uk website this morning.

Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude said that the lists would "make it easier for the public to view and compare the structure of government bodies because, for the first time, all central government departments and their agencies will present their charts together in the same format".

The charts dubbed "organograms" were in fact published in October, since when they have been populated with more granular detail.

They contain structural information including salaries and job titles of senior staff and directors that work in the public sector today, as well as pay grades, contact details and professions of staff on each team.

In a quick scan of the data, The Register noted several examples where individuals weren't forthcoming with their email addresses, instead preferring to use, for example, the Cabinet Office's webmaster address.

"We will be setting out plans shortly to publish more data which will increasingly help inform people about the public services they use every day, helping them to make more informed choices and drive better services," said Maude.

Presumably the minister is talking about the so-called Public Data Corporation that he first announced in January this year. By the time of its planned launch this autumn the corp is expected to dice and slice data and various government bodies into one organisation to make yet-to-be-revealed datasets available to the public.

The Public and Commercial Services Union hit out at ministers' "ideological plans to hollow out the public sector" yesterday, when it confirmed that more than half of its quarter-million-strong members had voted for industrial action. ®